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T-Mobile disses idea of SAS for millimeter wave bands

FierceWirelessTech

T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) is making it crystal clear: It does not like the idea of a Spectrum Access System (SAS) for coordinating terrestrial licensees and satellite operators in millimeter wave bands.

While a SAS is fine for the 3.5 GHz band, where the FCC designated three tiers -- Incumbent Access, Priority Access (PAL) and General Authorized Access (GAA) – it might not even be technically feasible at the higher millimeter bands, according to John Hunter, director of spectrum policy at T-Mobile, who was one of the panelists at the FCC's Spectrum Frontiers workshop last week.

One of the proposals in the FCC's Spectrum Frontiers Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) suggested importing the SAS model from the 3.5 GHz band. Under the SAS option in the NPRM, the FCC proposed the idea of requiring terrestrial licensees to provide satellite operators with information, like geographic coordinates, that the satellite operators would need in order to avoid causing interference to terrestrial operations.